


the same deep water

by oryx



Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, 宇宙戦隊キュウレンジャー | Uchu Sentai Kyuranger
Genre: Crossover, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 17:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11902179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: A chance encounter in a bar, and the beginning of a potential intra-sentai friendship.





	the same deep water

Here is an interesting factoid he’s come to learn: that he apparently can’t take his eyes off Champ for even a minute.  
   
Not when they have a clear objective, obviously. Champ is always single-minded and dedicated during those times. It’s the times in-between – the clue-hunting, the hopeless stakeouts, the waiting around in marketplace alleyways for Rebellion contacts who might never show – when you just never know when you might turn around to find him simply, abruptly gone. It’s baffling, the way a seven foot bull robot manages to vanish in the time it takes to buy a bag of Nilordean plums.  
   
Stinger has found him helping roof someone’s house. He’s found him coaching a game of pick-up zurriball between two rival gangs of street kids, and betting on tagreth races with the money they were supposed to be using to purchase false identification documents (“who needs ‘em! we can just fight our way in, can’t we?”).  
   
Today, Stinger finds him in a dive bar, arm wrestling with the man across the table. A man who does not appear to be robotic in the slightest. Stinger sidles up alongside them and wonders what kind of idiot you have to be to challenge a machine in a test of brute strength. The third person at the table, with long, sleek black hair and vague amusement in his eyes as he sips at his drink, seems as if he’s rather used to this sort of thing.  
   
“Hey, partner,” Champ says, glancing up at him, and his opponent tries to seize this moment of distraction, gritting his teeth and putting all his muscle into it, knuckles white where they’re curled around Champ’s fingers. Champ doesn’t budge an inch. He huffs out a quiet laugh, a curl of steam licking the air, and finally stops going on easy on this guy, slamming his arm into the tabletop without any further ado.  
   
“Dammit,” the stranger mutters, shaking out his undoubtedly stinging hand. His frown morphs into a crooked grin a second later, though, and he leans back in his seat looking oddly satisfied. “Guess there was no chance, huh? A bet’s a bet – your next drink’s on me.”  
   
“He’s a robot, Marvelous,” points out the long-haired man in the blue jacket. “Pretty sure he can’t drink any of this stuff.”  
   
“Oh. Yeah.” The stranger – Marvelous? what kind of name is that? – seems to mull it over for a moment before jabbing a thumb in Stinger’s direction. “A drink for your friend, then. He looks like he could use one.”  
   
“What’s that supposed to mea – ” Stinger begins to ask, baring his teeth in a scowl, but gets cut off by a genuine, overloud guffaw from Champ, who grabs him by the arm and yanks him down into the open seat at the table.  
   
“Y’know, I like you,” Champ says to Marvelous. There’s a warm kind of glow to his eyes. “It’s rare, findin’ someone who knows how to have a good time. Everyone’s so damn dour these days. Guess I can’t blame ‘em, but still.”  
   
“Yeah, what’s the deal with that?” Marvelous asks, as casual as can be. “This ‘Jark Matter’ or whatever? Everywhere we go people seem all worked up about it. They some kinda threat?”  
   
Stinger opens his mouth and then closes it again. He and Champ exchange a bewildered glance, and he can feel the first hints of wariness prickling like so many needles along the length of his tail.  
   
“…Are you saying you don’t know about them?” Stinger can’t keep the accusatory edge out of his voice. “This entire galaxy is living under their thumb. How can you not know?”  
   
It’s Marvelous and the man in blue’s turn to share a look.  
   
“Starting to get the feeling,” Marvelous says, after a moment of contemplation, “that we might be a little farther away from our usual haunts than we thought. There’s no Jark Matter where we come from.”  
   
“Our ship got caught in an electrical storm,” the man in blue explains. “We thought it just tossed us to a different sector, but. Looks like it could be a different universe altogether.”  
   
Stinger can feel his tension ease a bit. As implausible as their story sounds, he’s read the reports back on the Orion of the missions he missed out on – detailed accounts from Naga and Hammi and Xiao of hopping across some inexplicable boundary and ending up in a similar yet subtly different world. He wonders if it’s the presence of Jark Matter that is throwing off the natural order of things and thinning the gaps between realities.  
   
“A different universe, huh? Y’all don’t seem too worried about it,” Champ says, a whir of bemusement audible from somewhere in his chest.  
   
Marvelous simply grins. “We’ve dealt with worse.”  
   
  
   
  
   
There’s a bot fight scheduled to happen at the arena a few blocks away, a venue which their mark maybe possibly has front row tickets to. (Intelligence has been slim on this one.) Marvelous doesn’t take much encouraging from Champ to decide to tag along. The two of them look like a strangely well-suited pair in their black and red as they walk side-by-side through the marketplace, Champ gesturing broadly as he lays out the rules of a bot fight while Marvelous nods along.  
   
Stinger trails behind them with the person in blue, whose name he’s fairly certain is Joe.  
   
“You been with him long?” Joe asks, lifting his chin in Champ’s direction, and Stinger snaps his head around to look at him with wide eyes.  
   
“As partners, I mean,” Joe continues. He seems suspiciously like he’s trying not to laugh.  
   
“Oh,” Stinger says, and clears his throat awkwardly. “No. A few months.”  
   
Joe ‘hmm’s in acknowledgement. “It’s been years,” he says, his gazed fixed on Marvelous’s back, “for me and him.”  
   
“Well congratulations,” Stinger says, his voice dripping with pointed indifference, and Joe’s mouth curves into a wry smile.  
   
“I’m not bragging,” he says. “Just putting it out there. That sometimes things last, if you want them to. Sometimes people stay.”  
   
Stinger blinks, his pace slowing. “That’s – ” he begins to say, but Joe is already walking away, calling out to Marvelous and asking if he’s picked up any signals from their errant companions yet. Champ takes this moment to glance over his shoulder at Stinger.  
   
“What’re you dawdling around back there for?” he asks. “We’ve got places to be, y’know! A mission to do.”  
   
“Please. You just want to watch the fight,” Stinger retorts, but he ducks his head and smiles ever so slightly as he jogs to catch up with Champ’s long strides.  
   
By the time they’ve joined the line queuing to enter the arena, Champ’s rambling has switched topics just slightly: now he’s giving Marvelous a play-by-play account of one his own matches, the one where he nearly lost both his horns against a bot from the Castor System. Stinger has heard this one before. Twice, actually. (He wonders, though, why it is he never gets tired of Champ’s stories from his days in the ring. Something about the excitement in his voice as he tells them, maybe. The enthusiasm and the wistfulness. The glimpses into a time long before Stinger knew him.)  
   
He glances sidelong at Joe. He seems fairly interested as he listens to Champ’s nattering, and yet every once in a while his eyes will flick back to Marvelous, observing anyone who gets too close to him as if he were assessing a potential threat.  
   
“How,” Stinger says, with awkwardness lying heavy in the back of his throat, “how did you meet?”  
   
Joe doesn’t seem at all perturbed by the question. “He saved me,” he says, matter-of-fact, just loud enough to be heard over the melded voices of the people around them. “There was something I spent a long time believing in. But in the end it turned out to be no good. He gave me something new to live for.”  
   
Stinger can feel something twist deep inside him, painful and sharp. “Oh,” he says. “I see.”  
   
“It gets easier, you know.” Joe is leveling him with a look that seems to see right through him. “Whatever it is you’re dealing with. Give it another year and it’ll feel like it happened a lifetime ago.”  
   
Stinger stares back at him, and it’s like the world has narrowed to just the two of them, the noise around them muted.  
   
“…Or maybe I’m assuming too much,” Joe says with a shrug. “You’ve just got a look about you. Reminds me of someone.”  
   
Stinger swallows hard. “You – ”  
   
“What’re you two muttering about?” Marvelous asks, his voice shattering the moment as quick as it came. He and Champ are peering back at them curiously.  
   
“None of your business,” Joe says, with a faint, inscrutable smile. He reaches out to give Marvelous a gentle shove forward. “You’re holding up the line, idiot.”  
   
  
   
  
   
In the end, their mark doesn’t show up to the match. Maybe there’s some small part of Stinger that’s grateful for it – he hasn’t seen Champ relax and enjoy himself this much in a while. He keeps nudging Stinger with his elbow and saying “did you see that” and “I pulled off that same move once, y’know.” Meanwhile, Marvelous is on his feet, hands cupped around his mouth and shouting at the underdog to go for the headlock.  
   
Stinger glances over at Joe, who seems, as per usual, quietly entertained by the current goings-on.  
   
“I’d prefer a swordfight,” he says, answering Stinger’s unasked question. “But this has its moments, too.”  
   
Champ slaps Marvelous on the back so hard he almost topples over when the competitor they were rooting for manages to pull it off. (Stinger knows by now to brace himself.) The two of them are animatedly recounting their favorite moments as they mill out of the arena alongside the rest of the crowd.  
   
“I feel like we’re chaperones for a playdate,” Stinger mutters, which gets a huff of laughter out of Joe.  
   
“You’ll get used to that,” he says, a fond expression flickering almost imperceptibly across his face. He looks as if he were about to say something else, but is cut off by a beeping noise – the device in his pocket, which he takes out and flips open before pressing to his ear.  
   
“About time,” he says. “Where are you?” He listens for a moment to whoever’s on the other side of the conversation. “Oh, so you’re – ah.”  
   
He’s staring up at the sky, and Stinger pauses mid-step to follow his gaze as a massive shadow engulfs them and casts the street in darkness. It’s a ship, but not the kind he would expect – it reminds him of the Argo, built to resemble a vessel that would traverse the sea, with a long wooden bow and billowing cloth sails. He’s still blinking up at it when a rope descends over the side of the deck, and someone leaps overboard and slides down in the blink of an eye to land not ten feet away from them.  
   
“Marvelous-san,” he cries, flinging himself at Marvelous and nearly bowling him off his feet as he catches him a hug. He does the same to Joe a moment later. (Both of them look mildly irritated by this, but in a way that seems almost performative. As if this were an old, comforting routine.) “I was so worried! This is definitely super far away from where we were – Doc checked it out and he doesn’t have any clue, y’know? He says he can’t find any of these star formations in the almanac, so it’s like. We were all freaking out a b – ”  
   
Marvelous reaches out to clap a hand over his mouth. “Take it easy, will you? It’s just another universe.”  
   
He stares at him with comically wide eyes as he pulls his hand away. “A – another – Doc, he says we’re in a different universe!”  
   
The person who just descended down the rope stumbles a bit, looking at them in alarm over an open holo-book, which is displaying a miniature map of an unfamiliar solar system. “ _What_?” he says. “Seriously? Oh. Oh, geez. Okay. Well that would definitely explain it…” He trails off, frowning as he hastily flips through page after page.  
   
They are joined shortly by two other people – one with a sly expression, who seems to be laughing at Joe as she nudges him with her elbow, and another who presses a delicate hand to her cheek and smiles in relief when she sees her companions in one piece. Champ and Stinger stand off to the side, exchanging a glance. Clearly Champ doesn’t want to disturb some kind of team reunion either.  
   
“If y’all are good, we’ll be heading off, then,” Champ says. “Gotta report back to HQ. We’ll let ‘em know that you’re stranded, though. Might be something the higher-ups could do.”  
   
The group turns to look at them in unison. “Ah, right,” Marvelous says. “We met these guys at a bar. They’re, uh. What was it?”  
   
“Ultimate saviors,” Joe recites.  
   
“That’s it.” He grins. “Well, I wouldn’t mind meeting up for drinks again. As long as you ‘ultimate saviors’ don’t have a problem with pirates.”  
   
Stinger blinks. “Pirates?” he echoes, and swivels slowly on his heel to look up at Champ. “You made friends with _pirates_?”  
   
“Wha – so did you! Plus, what do y’all even do? Steal things?”  
   
This gets a noncommittal shrug from Marvelous and a “hell yeah” from the woman in the yellow jacket.  
   
“Well, we’ve got folks on our team who do that, too,” Champ says. “So what’s the problem?”  
   
“That’s.” Stinger presses his lips together in a thin line. “We’ve just had an image problem lately, you know. Jark Matter likes to paint us as troublemakers and they don’t need any more fuel for that fire.  
   
“…But,” and here he glances sidelong at Joe, who is hiding a smile as the person in the patterned neckerchief tugs on his sleeve and points excitedly at something in the distance, “I guess they don’t seem so bad, for career criminals. Just like ours.”  
   
Champ nods sagely. “Y’know… Marvelous didn’t seem much for talkin’ about personal matters, but. Everything he said about that Joe fellow made me think of you.” A contemplative hum. “Funny, huh?”  
   
Stinger stares at him, feeling his eyes widen gradually. He watches Champ walk over to exchange contact info with Marvelous and suddenly doesn’t know what to do with himself, crossing and uncrossing his arms as his tail flicks back and forth. When Joe lifts a hand in farewell, Stinger mirrors the gesture with awkwardness itching at the back of his neck.  
   
“If y’all are ever in trouble, give us a call,” Champ says. He lifts his Seiza Blaster and strikes a pose with it. “The Kyurangers will be there, that’s a promise.”  
   
And at that the two of them turn to take their leave, followed by a loud gasp from the person in the grey jacket.  
   
  
   
  
   
“Champ,” Stinger says. They’re making their way to the outskirts of town, where their Voyagers won’t be as noticeable, and the paved streets are beginning to give way to pebbles and sand beneath their feet.  
   
“Hm?”  
   
“Once we win, what are you going to do?”  
   
Champ makes a thoughtful noise that sounds a bit like gears grinding. “In specifics? Can’t really say. Never been much of a forward thinker. I’ll probably stick with you, though, if you’ll have me.”  
   
Stinger stops in the middle of the road, feeling as if someone has just taken his heart in their hand and squeezed. His throat is tight, and he swallows around it.  
   
“I guess I might as well,” he says, attempting and failing to adopt an indifferent tone. “This is a mutually beneficial partnership, after all.”  
   
Champ laughs, a sharp and sudden sound that bounces off the walls of the surrounding low white-walled buildings.  
   
“Yeah I bet that’s how everyone’s talking about us,” he says. “‘Mutually beneficial.’” He turns and reaches out to grab Stinger by the chin, firm yet gentle, his fingers warm against his skin. “Maybe by the time we’ve beaten Jark Matter you’ll have worked on your honesty some more, hm?”  
   
Stinger can feel heat creeping into his cheeks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
   
“Nothing, nothing,” Champ says, a smile in his voice, and presses the button on his Blaster, striding away to meet his Voyager as it descends down, black and glittering through the clouds.


End file.
